


Rocket

by NeurotropicAgentX



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crack Treated Seriously, Discussions about Eating People, In SPAAACE!, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 00:55:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17478209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeurotropicAgentX/pseuds/NeurotropicAgentX
Summary: In which Eddie and Venom lose the fight with Riot and wake up aboard Drake’s rocket. Discussions about appropriate eating habits ensue.





	Rocket

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my editor for her invaluable assistance.

Eddie came to with a weird feeling of vertigo. He could feel Venom swirling through his body, checking for damage and patching wounds. Why was he wounded…? Drake. Riot. The rocket. Eddie tried to lurch upright, but something felt off, wrong. What…?

**Sorry,** Venom said shortly. **We weren’t strong enough. Riot damaged us enough that I had to focus on keeping us alive. It… dragged us aboard, I think.**

Eddie looked around. They were in the rocket. The off feeling was free-falling. There wasn’t any _gravity_. Eddie swallowed down his rising panic. At the other end of the (rocket, space ship, cold hard vacuum) _room_ was a figure poised over a complex-looking console. Thin tendrils stretched from a humanoid body and twisted around handles set into the walls. Drake, Riot, the symbiosis, whatever, was moving mostly-human hands rapidly over the controls. It was impossible to tell which of them was moving the body. 

Eddie got his hands on the nearest wall… surface… and tried to orient himself, wondering if there was something he could do with the element of surprise. The thought of sacrificing himself, of sacrificing _Venom_ , to stop this ship made his insides twist. Throwing them into a fight against Riot that they couldn’t win was one thing. Tearing apart a rocket they were on and facing the vacuum of space was something else entirely. But it would be the right thing to do. 

Venom was oddly silent as Eddie managed to pull himself a little closer to Drake. Then Riot’s deep voice rang through the room before Eddie got anywhere close to striking distance. **‘Don’t even think about it, Venom.’** Riot hadn’t manifested a face. That inhuman voice must have come out of Drake’s mouth. Drake’s hands paused over the controls and he straightened out before turning around. The zero-g manoeuvre looked a lot smoother than Eddie’s attempts to get anywhere. Fuck. How long had he and Venom been out? 

‘Ah, you’re both awake. I’d… wondered,’ said Drake.

**‘I would have been justified in killing you for desertion. You’re lucky you’re slightly more useful to me alive.’** Riot's words, Drake's body. Eddie shivered. Drake didn't seem the least bit off-put by being puppeted by Riot in the middle of a conversation.

Venom manifested a head beside Eddie's shoulder. **‘I did reconnaissance. I have useful knowledge about Earth,’** he said quickly.

‘Dude!’ said Eddie. 

**It’s alright, I have a plan,** Venom said inside Eddie’s head, just as Riot spoke out of Drake’s mouth again.

**‘Yes. And that’s why you’re still alive.’**

Eddie kept quiet, if Venom had a plan, maybe things would be okay. **‘There was another human I occupied for a while,’** said Venom. **‘She was strong. Her immune system was very compatible. She should be a host when we get back.’**

‘Let me guess, Ms Weying?’ said Drake.

**‘Yes!’**

‘I’m sure that can be arranged.’

‘What!?’ Eddie shouted. 

**See, I told you I had a plan,** Venom said smugly to Eddie. **Riot won’t care either way and this way we save Anne. Then we can eat her new boyfriend and get her back. Everyone wins.**

‘We are not doing that! That is not a win-win scenario,’ Eddie hissed.

Venom didn’t reply, but the bits of him that weren’t manifesting swirled uneasily beneath Eddie’s skin. He mostly seemed confused by Eddie’s reaction.

**‘I take it this means you won’t try and sabotage the ship and doom us all to the vacuum?’** Riot asked. 

**‘We don’t want to die like that,’** Venom admitted quietly. Eddie’s guts twisted again and he didn’t think it had anything to do with the zero-g. He and Venom were in pretty strong agreement about that. Maybe things would change when they got closer to wherever they were going. Eddie hoped that they’d come up with a better plan before then.

**‘Excellent.’** With that, more dark silvery tendrils shot out of Drake’s body to turn them around. 

**‘Wait,’** said Venom. **‘Small ship. What’s the plan for food?’** Eddie cringed. Knowing Drake, there were probably a bunch of human victims stashed somewhere. 

Riot growled, the sound not even remotely human. **‘We’ve both got hosts. They’ll eat. It won’t be pleasant fasting, but we’ll survive it.’**

Venom’s agitation was instant and it hit Eddie through their link like a physical force. **‘What!? No! It’s going to be months. It’ll be agony!’**

Riot manifested a head for the first time, sending out tendrils from somewhere behind Drake’s back that coalesced into face with opaque eyes narrowed to slits. **‘Grow up,’** he hissed. **‘I’m not asking for anything I’m not going to put myself through.’**

Drake raised a hand and stroked a tendril that was writhing across his chest. ‘I wish you’d given me some time to redesign the rocket. I could have provided at least _some_ facilities for live animals.’

**‘Too much of a delay. And it doesn't matter, I'll hold my hunger away from the link.’**

'Not the point, Riot,' Drake said under his breath. He sounded... fond. Exasperated, sure, like they'd had this argument before, but still fond. Eddie's lip curled. Great, the two monsters had found each other.

**‘Eat _your_ host,’** Venom muttered sullenly. 

For once, Eddie was okay with the cannibalism threat. It was Drake after all, the man who wanted to turn the entire Earth and all its people into a feeding ground for Riot and the rest of his parasites.

**‘ _What_ did you say?’** Riot demanded.

Fear pulsed through Venom’s half of their link and his face drew back behind Eddie’s head. **‘Nothing. I know you’re stronger.’**

Drake's expression was pure smug and eminently punchable. 

**‘Obviously you’re too pathetic to be a threat. But joking about eating sapients is sick.’**

Eddie frowned. Venom slid forward again and his tongue lolled out into the air. **‘It's not a joke. Humans taste pretty good.’**

Riot recoiled. **‘I'd heard the rumours about you, but really?! Sapients? You're riding one!’**

Drake sighed. ‘Riot, you’re a soldier. Eating sapients isn’t somehow worse than killing them.’

**‘Yes it is. It’s disgusting.’**

Eddie stared at the two of them. ‘I… can’t believe I’m about to say these words, but I’m with Riot on this one. Eating people is gross and to _normal_ humans it absolutely feels worse.’

**‘Hey!’** Venom said, sounding slightly wounded.

‘Sorry, babe, it’s true.’

‘And I’m sure your normal human instincts make it feel like the world is flat and the sun orbits the Earth. You can’t trust the mess of primitive circuitry evolution has left us. You have to use your reason, not your _feelings_ , to determine what’s correct,’ Drake said contemptuously. 

‘Says the guy conducting unethical and illegal human experiments!’

‘For the salvation of the entire human race!’ 

Eddie frowned and turned to look at Venom, who was still perched on his shoulder. ‘Wait, you said Riot’s going to destroy the Earth and humanity, but if he and the other symbiotes don’t like “eating sapients” then what’s the plan?’ 

Venom’s head weaved up and down, maybe a bit like he was shrugging? **‘We come in, take over hosts, eat the biomass. We kill any remaining humans that resist. No more Earth,’** Venom said simply.

**‘Shut up!’** Riot roared.

Drake sighed again and brushed the back of his hand down the side of Riot’s jaw to get his attention. ‘We’re already in space. You don’t have to keep up the pretence. I’ve known about your plan for a while now.’

Riot went utterly still. It was weird seeing a symbiote without the constant background shifting of face and tendrils. **‘What? But you _helped_ me.’**

‘Drake’s a monster, footage at six,’ Eddie muttered.

Drake ignored him. ‘I still think your people are my species’ best hope of survival. You obviously don’t want to eat us, and with the right PR spin, you’ll have human hosts _volunteering_. I’d prefer not to strip Earth’s unique ecosystem, but I’d sacrifice the planet in a heartbeat to take humanity to the stars. There are clearly other planets capable of sustaining life. You’ve shared a few of your memories. With human ingenuity behind your people’s raw power, we could build an empire. We could _cultivate_ whole planets and establish a migratory pattern between them so no one planet gets fully depleted. Look, I’ve given this a lot of thought.’

**‘What?’** Riot repeated, sounding a little lost.

‘As magnificent as symbiotes are, I think your appetite clouds your vision for a brighter future. But together with humans, we could build something great.’

‘God, do you listen when you talk? You’re a megalomaniac!’ Eddie snarled.

‘A megalomaniac is someone with delusions of grandeur. In my case, they’re not delusions.’ Drake smiled and his teeth looked just a little too long and a little too sharp.

Eddie turned away in disgust. ‘Let’s go find those rations,’ he said to Venom. Obviously arguing with an asshole like Drake wasn’t going to get them anywhere. 

Venom melted back beneath his skin. He grumbled something about dead food and made several speculations about Riot’s spawning. And while Eddie didn’t actually know how Venom’s kind reproduced, he was pretty sure it wasn’t like that.

Eddie grabbed at one of the handholds and as he started pulling himself along, Venom sent out tendrils to stabilise them. ‘Thanks,’ Eddie said, a small smile curving his lips despite himself.

**You are welcome. Your species was not made for space.**

‘Lucky we’re together then.’ Venom somehow managed to exude a wordless sense of smug. Eddie snorted, but his smile gradually fell away. ‘We have to stop them.’

He could feel Venom’s agitation echoing his own. **Not easy.**

‘Yeah. But we have time before everything goes to hell, right? Months, you said. We can work something out. And if we can’t…’ Well. There was always the last resort. At the last possible moment. 

**We’ll work something out,** Venom agreed. **My plan to save Anne was good, and it didn’t take me long to think of it at all.**

**Author's Note:**

> Crack premise: technically, though we saw Riot kill a lot, we never saw it eat a person on screen. It ate some eels that one time, but that’s all. Maybe Venom is the weird aberration and most symbiotes have a squick around eating intelligent beings. I don’t think this was _at all_ intentional in the movie, but the idea amused me so I thought I’d share.


End file.
